Tag Archives: filmmaking

The Complete Untethered Series

The latter part of last year was spent shooting and finishing two web-series for portable power company TYLT. Untethered: My Passion introduces us to 9 unique people actively living their passions and covers a wide range of interests spanning music to fashion to comic books to photography to BASE jumping. Untethered: On the Road follows Erika and me on a 55 day road trip across 42 U.S. states as we live out of a coupe, document our travels, experience new things, and meet work-related deadlines.

Both series released earlier this year and My Passion garnered a Telly Award.

Watch both series here in their entirety (all 16 episodes) and see how many faces you recognize. Take a look back at how the journey unfolded on instagram via #LiveUntethered or #ChinnyRoad2016.

 

Finally Reflecting on 2016

If the number of 2016 posts in this journal were representative of productivity, it would appear to have been a mostly uneventful year. That certainly wasn’t the case. January felt like a continuation of December and only now is it beginning to feel like the new year has begun. And so, the time to grade myself on goal completion for the previous year and to set goals for the current year has finally arrived. I am a proponent of annual goal setting. When I make a solid list, refer to it regularly, and hold myself accountable I tend to meet many of them. Oddly, last year I didn’t make a solid list. Apparently I forgot to or lost it on my perpetually chaotic desk. Despite that oversight, several non-specified goals came to fruition and a number of pleasing events occurred.

  • I have been wanting to travel for work more frequently. I had three opportunities. 1) A producing/shooting gig in Costa Rica (mentioned in my last post to this blog nearly a year ago). 2) A Facebook live-stream overnight trip near Joshua Tree for AirBNB. 3) A 2 month roadtrip around the U.S.with Erika (55 days—42 states—13,510 miles) creating a web-series for TYLT that will be releasing very soon.
  • We at Butcher Bird funded and shot our first feature film. It is now running through the final stages of post.
  • I convinced my mother to try a tandem sky-dive
  • I lead some great climbing routes including the 1500ish foot Solar Slab, the unique Tunnel Vision, and the imposing Matthes Crest (which turned into a bit of an all-night epic because of a foolish attempt to retrieve a fallen camera).
  • I descended a few undocumented canyons (some with the ever beloved Scott Swaney).
  • I finally got to shoot video of a snow covered San Antonio Falls canyoneering descent (something I had been trying to do for quite some time and posted about here on this blog) and put together a 360 VR video of the Seven Teacups.
  • Erika and I finally made it to Alaska and toured a glacier. We also made it to several National Parks we hadn’t visited before and attended Halloween in Salem, MA. We have now been to 45 of the 50 states.
  • I got to do some great social things with friends like multiple game nights, an awesome bachelor party weekend in Zion for the Merrill wedding, visit my family multiple times, and introduce multiple people to their first ever multi-pitch climbs.
  • The podcast continued (currently 46 episodes) and featured guests from all over the country recorded in their respective locales.
  • Erika and I celebrated 10 years together touring the treetops of Wrightwood.

It was a rewarding year, but there are certainly places I fell short:

  • Happy Canyoneering (my puppet talkshow short) did not move forward.
  • Scuba Climbers (my Class C canyoneering documentary) did not move forward.
  • I slacked on a proper physical fitness routine in the last half of the year.
  • I didn’t make the strides towards big wall climbing I’d hoped to and climbing El Cap for my 40th birthday is seeming increasingly less likely.
  • I still haven’t started work on a Death Valley Mars short I want to do.
  • My office is still a disorganized mess.
  • I didn’t try cross country skiing, dogsledding, or solo backpacking.
  • I haven’t gotten back into a regular illustrating routine in years.
  • And various other projects, responsibilities, etc. languished while my pile of books to read increased faster than it depleted.

And so now I sit compiling my list of goals for 2017. I look at where I succeeded and failed in 2016 and attempt to course correct. Where do I want to be in a year and how do I get there? Life is too damn short to squander.

3 Bags and an Ultrasound

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On 4 Feb. 2016 at 4:35 PM, I received a text from Steven, “R u avail for paid shoot in Hawaii feb 15-20?”
I replied, “Sure. What is the shoot?”
“fast changing project. are you okay to go to Amazon instead?”
And thus it began.

On the night of 9. Feb. 2016, the project was greenlit and I finally received a briefing. I had a week to put together a very particular shoot in an undecided Central American country. A producing gig, something I tend to avoid and let my business partners handle, something I am not especially experienced in doing. In a foreign country. To shoot in 10 days. With a limited budget. I’ve always wanted to be paid to travel to foreign countries so I accepted the ludicrous challenge. I scoured the internet for any sort of production companies I could find in Belize, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Ecuador. I sent out a bunch of emails and went to bed hoping for the best.

The next two days were a proverbial whirlwind filled with nonstop emails, international phone calls, and general shoot preparations. Two companies were my international saviors,  Costa Rica Film Support and Belize Film Works. They helped me build packages of photos and promises to quickly sell our client on a location. Costa Rica won out and the night of the 11th I had tickets to fly on the 17th. My crew would meet me on the 20th (after multiple days of back-to-back shooting in Singapore). In 48 hours, we’d gone from a very rough idea to a full-fledged planned international shoot. Much of my thanks goes to Julie Echeverri of Costa Rica Film Support whose fast communication and problem-solving made this unrealistic goal possible. She also organized everything for us on the Costa Rica side from boarding, to transportation, to meals.

Wednesday morning arrived and Erika left me at LAX with 100 lbs. of luggage (2 duffel bags of props and costumes, a backpack of personal and work items, and a portable Ultrasound). Traveling with an Ultrasound is an interesting experience and I have become quite adept at explaining what it is in Spanish to confused TSA personnel. An Ultrasound causes confusion domestically as well and could effectively pass as either a record player, musical instrument, or George Foreman Grill. Not a single person ever asked me, “Hey, is that an Ultrasound?”

I arrived in San Jose that afternoon and was greeted by Zequ, an Argentinian Anthony Kiedis lookalike, and my local producer. The next morning, he drove me 5 hours (largely in the rain) down South to the Bri Bri region. We passed through an amazing rainforest, down coastlines, and over an abundance of rivers of all types. He and I would spend the next few days scouting innumerable rivers as possible shooting locations, preparing our local actors, building a thatched hut (ranchito) from bamboo, navigating Costa Rican permitting laws, weaving through dense traffic and across flooded backroads, traipsing through muddy marshlands, managing a local drunk canoe pilot we called the Shaman, repeatedly crossing a somewhat rickety suspension bridge, struggling to make everything come together and meet approval in 2 days, dealing with changing plans and weather, spying wild sloths in treetops, and amusing each other immensely. We put the finishing touches on our ranchito shortly before the arrival of the cast and crew Saturday morning. Late that night, we were done. Sunday was a day for a little work, a lot of travel, and celebrations.

Monday morning, the crew flew to Los Angeles for two final shoot days. My afternoon flight was cancelled and I was forced to spend another night in San Jose in a complimentary Sheraton room. The week of 3 bags and an Ultrasound refused to end. Pura Vida.

Dreaming of a White Canyon

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In December of 2014, I rode up to San Antonio Falls off of Mt. Baldy with two friends for a quick morning canyon run. We were surprised by large quantities of snow along the road, the trail, and throughout the canyon. A dream was born that day. A canyon covered in snow could make for a great short video. I did capture some footage on a GoPro that day (shots can be seen in this compilation video), but my hope was to put together a proper shoot. I returned to the area multiple times in the Winter of 2015 hoping for similar conditions. I was welcomed only by paltry or non-existent snow patches. The Winter of 2016 arrived and the disheartening pattern seemed to be continuing into the new year. Then, multiple days of rain hit Los Angeles.

The canyoneering community went crazy as everyone rushed into the wet canyons of the area as they would only be truly wet for a short period of time. The Saturday weather in the Baldy area looked promising. A last minute group was put together and we arrived to find snow levels exceeding my hopes and expectations. Steven manned a quadcopter while Alden, Scott, and I hiked the shortcut approach losing a few Yaktrax along the way (Alden’s crampons fared much better). The canyon was gorgeous and almost entirely blanketed in snow. Shrubs and yucca struggled to peek above the powder, icicles  decorated the granite walls, and anchors were buried underneath inches of snow. The stream often disappeared beneath miniature snow bridges, as did the waterfalls. After a few hours we were through the canyon and had acquired a fair amount of GH4 footage alongside quadcopter footage. A second run was desired, but less accommodating weather was on the way. Hopefully El Niño continues its work and we can return in February to shoot more video in such stellar conditions.

Several screengrabs below.

Announcing Scuba Climbers

I have been searching for an intriguing topic for a long-form canyoneering documentary for awhile. Reviewing footage and reflecting back on events from my three-week roadtrip finally  aligned the tumbling Tetris pieces in my mind. The topic became clear: Class C Canyoneering, big water Canyoning. There are lots of intriguing, exciting, funny, and possibly heart-breaking stories all linked by the exploration of the wettest of canyons. My hope is to bring together several groups of canyoneers and filmmakers over the next 2-3 years and record those stories.

Why will it be called Scuba Climbers? As we exited Cascade Creek in Ouray, a woman pulled into the trailhead and stopped before us. “Are you guys climbers or SCUBA divers?” As popular as Canyoneering is becoming, it is still foreign to most people. Whether we call ourselves canyoneers or Scuba Climbers, our image is equally confusing to many people. But the main reason is because I am a smart-ass.

In the meantime, check out the teaser video above featuring some of the footage we acquired in Oregon, Washington, and Colorado.

You can keep up with the production at our website and join in the fun on instagram by posting your own Class C canyon photos and using the hashtag  #scubaclimbers.

Tolerate My Voice & Hear My Podcast

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I
t began as a video web-series a year ago. I thought it would be wise to further complicate my life so it has expanded into a podcast. What is it? G.O. Get Outside. And it is live. It is even on iTunes.

Expect a new episode every Thursday beginning September 10th. Season one will clock in at 21 installments (wrapping in early January). Three episodes are up now. What is it about? I’m glad you asked so I won’t feel so awkward telling you. This is what it says in iTunes and on the website:

G.O. Get Outside: The Podcast is a radio-style interview show for people who like to get outdoors or would like to get outdoors. Hell, it may even be a show for people who don’t know they want to get outdoors. Too busy? Think you don’t have time for frivolous outside crap? Poppycock! Each episode of G.O. delves into the outdoor lifestyle of some everyday schmo who probably has more in common with you than you think. Whether you are BASE jumping off a flying unicorn or hiking around your neighborhood in between diaper changes, you have a place here. Pop open your podcast machine and give it a listen. Maybe it will stoke some embers you didn’t know were burning.

Still unclear? Listen to episode one where it is explained in more detail or listen to all of them to really clarify your confusion. While you are there, want to do me a huge favor? You do?! How magnanimous of you! Subscribe, rate, and review it in iTunes. It will help more than you can imagine. Off to your podcast machine. Get. Go. Shoo.

Five Packed Weeks

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July 14 through August 19 is a bit of a blur. A convergence of events laid the groundwork for five weeks of productive travel. 35 days on the road split by 2.5 days at home. It began as a plan to attend a wedding in Puerto Morelos, Mexico (near Cancun). Erika and I decided it would be a good idea to do some additional exploration in the area since we would already be flying to the Yucatan. Thus, we visited Belize and Guatemala after leaving Mexico where we did a fair amount of diving, cave tubing, ruin touring, chicken bus riding, sweating, and swimming. We then returned to Los Angeles. I had been hoping to shoot some canyoneering footage in the Pacific Northwest and had made some loose plans with folks in the area. I also had begun recording several interviews for an outdoor podcast I was developing while simultaneously working on ways to bring more outdoor related video business to Butcher Bird Studios (that’s my business with some other dudes). The fates alerted me to the fact that the Outdoor Retailer Show and Ouray Canyoning Festival were occurring in succession this summer around the time I was hoping to go to Oregon. The idea for chinnyroad2015 was born. Upon returning from Central America, I would head out on a 4600 mile road trip 2 days later. I piled a large amount of gear into my car and left for San Francisco.

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Over 21 days, I travelled from Southern California to Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. I ran 11 canyons (shooting several), recorded 6 podcast interviews, attended the Outdoor Retailer Show, Attended the Canyoning Festival, learned to line dance from elderly strangers in a park, visited many new places, slept in campgrounds, slept in my car, tried Airbnb for the first time, acquired my first smartphone, flooded my new instagram account with photos, made dozens of cool new friends and business contacts, won some prizes, saw a dog standing on a roof, visited a cool science museum, ate dinner at Twitter, spied a “Bigfoot Research Vehicle,” fought the smell of mildew from wet gear in my car with the urinal rich smell of a “new car scent” air freshener, reunited with many long-distance friends across the West, listened to every type of radio program available, slept in a murder motel, visited the shop in “The Middle of Nowhere,” appreciated my hammock, hoped rain wouldn’t turn into flash floods, watched Alden cut out his own stitches, shot footage of the no longer orange Animas River in Durango, watched fawns nursing at a campsite in Silverton, paid for a straight-razor shave, and never once got to climb any of the awesome rocks I saw.

The aftermath of these two trips will sporadically appear in this journal for some time I imagine. And often at chinnyroad2015flashback.

Banff School Days

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The Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival is one of the most respected (if not the preeminent) adventure and outdoor film festival in existence. It is held for nine days every fall in Canada’s oldest national park, Banff. Afterwards, select films are screened in forty countries during their World Tour. I have been attending the World Tour in Pasadena for the last few years looking forward to a time when I could attend the festival itself (hopefully as a contributing filmmaker). With the release of G.O. Get Outside, this seemed like the ideal year to take that step.

While reviewing their site for submission information, I stumbled across their Adventure Filmmakers’ Workshop—an intensive 8-day program during the festival focused specifically on outdoor and adventure filmmaking. I decided to both submit G.O. to the festival and to apply for the workshop. The application process may have been more involved than my college applications and was the first time I have written a resume in several years. In the end, G.O. was not accepted to the festival largely because it was too rudimentary and instructional for the festival crowd. I was, although, one of the students selected for the workshop.

November 1st was a busy day. I woke early for a 12-hour shoot, went immediately to a Day of the Dead party afterwards, and then directly to the airport for my international flight to Alberta, Canada and the beginning of 10 long and fantastic days at the Banff Centre, an arts school situated in a national park. Each day there was as busy as that day before I arrived, packed full of some combination of classroom time, festival screenings, socializing and parties, and churning out a short movie. It was like being in college again—little sleep, lots of fun and productivity (and a little stress). I had been unsure about whether the workshop would be a valuable investment of time and money. In the end, it may have been one of the best decisions I have made in years. The instructors (Michael Brown and Keith Partridge) were extremely knowledgeable and all-around great people. My fellow students were also awesome people—everyone was eager to help each other and share knowledge. I hope to work with many (or all of them) in the future and I look forward to seeing what they all create. We also had access to facilities and festival events most attendees do not. I left with an inundation of pertinent information and valuable contacts it would have taken many years to accumulate.

As part of the program, we were broken into six groups and tasked with creating a short movie (everything from shooting to final post production and screening) within two days (while also finding time to party in town at night). Unbeknownst to us, a panel of judges incorporating festival filmmakers and employees of Red Bull and National Geographic were going to screen our shorts alongside of us and then choose their top three to play during the actual film festival. My group came in second place. G.O. didn’t make it into the festival, but our two-day student film did.

I’ve already started working on my submission for next year.

Deluge Time

Jumping off rocks don’t pay the bills. Sitting at a computer making things move does. It’s that time again—the time when I bury you all in a torrent of video links and embeds of various projects that went live in the last few months.

More game trailers for Gamevil. Party Slots was a fun one with lots of compositing people I know into goofy game scenarios. Ocean Tales and Dynasty Warlord are a couple of others we put together that rely more on motion graphics and animation. I contributed a few motion graphics to Perfect Inning, Luis and Travis handled everything else. Then, there was the hard one:

Mark of the Dragon was tricky. It involved using Element 3D and C4D Lite inside of After Effects in ways they weren’t intended to composite a bunch of individual 3D game elements into a story. It was essentially one big workaround that turned out pretty well considering. I had done some similar hoops-jumping for Pocket Gunfighters, but that one was not nearly as complex.

I was responsible for the visual effects in three of Nerdist’s Terror Twins episodes: The episodes starring Doug Jones, Brian Huskey, and Greg Sestero. I also did VFX for a few of their JLA episodes such as the Cinco de Mayo episode. There were a few other VFX things like Warp Zone’s Smite series : episodes 1, 3, and 4, but this should be more than a large enough video inundation for anyone’s attention span.

Taking Steps

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Exploration, adventure, and the outdoors have always been of interest to me. Growing up in Louisiana, I spent a fair amount of time outdoors, but adventure sports never seemed like an option. Climbing was something I saw on TV or in magazines. Besides, Louisiana has no mountains or boulders. I had to settle for trees. Surfing was something I longed to do, yet it was also out of reach. I wanted to try backpacking, but never did, even though I joined a club in High School that could have shown me how. I told myself I couldn’t afford it. Louisiana is known as Sportsman’s Paradise. The sports this encompasses are hunting and fishing. I knew many hunters and fisherman growing up, but not a single person who could have shown me how to tie a figure eight or paddle into a wave. The outdoor activities that interested me seemed complicated, expensive, and out of reach. I would finally learn otherwise at the age of 29 after living in California for four years.

I think this is the norm. I think most of us suspect that outdoor and adventure sports are something reserved for the elite, something beyond our capabilities.  They aren’t. You just need the personal drive and directions to the starting line.

Today, we at Butcher Bird Studios released a four episode web-series called G.O. Get Outside. If you want to get into caving, hiking, surfing, or canyoneering, these episodes can help you get started. Hopefully, there will be more episodes focusing on other activities in the future. It took me nearly three decades to find the trailhead. I hope these episodes can help you get there sooner.

gogetoutside.com